You are hired. Someone sends you everything they have. It arrives sealed, and each seal has a four-digit code that lives somewhere in what you have already read. That is the whole machine. Everything else is you, a pen, and the person across the table disagreeing with you.
A letter from your client sets the case: who died, who was there, why the official answer does not sit right. A newspaper clipping, a map, a few odds and ends. The first code is already in this envelope. Read the letter twice.
Witness statements. A sheriff's report. A phone bill. A tank log. A photograph of a boot print with a ruler beside it. You build the timeline yourself and notice who lied about a small thing, and whether the small thing matters.
Sometimes the code is a date you have to find, sometimes a cipher whose key is on an index card in the last envelope, sometimes a serial number you look up on an inventory sheet. Every key is in the box. Nothing needs the internet.
When you can say who, how and why, and name the document that clears each of the others, you accuse. Right, and the sealed solution opens with the whole story and every piece of evidence laid out in order. Wrong, and your client writes back that it does not hold, and points you at the hints.
The Golden Age mystery writers had rules. So do we. Every case is checked against these before it goes on the shelf.
Not a feeling. A document. A time-stamped phone call, a traffic ticket, a signed agreement that dissolves the motive. You will be able to point to it.
No single clue names them. Three or four facts converge: access, time, a lie about something they should not have lied about. You earn the name.
Cipher tables, code cards, inventories. If a puzzle needs it, we packed it. No trivia, no outside knowledge, no telephone.
A weather report in the newspaper. A count on an inventory. A phone directory card. You will flip back through the first envelope in the last ten minutes. That is on purpose.
Your client never seals an envelope with a number they could not have had. When she withholds something, she tells you she is withholding it.
Three tiers for every gate and for the accusation: a nudge, the mechanism, the answer. Open them in order or not at all. Nobody is scoring you.
Open the case in any modern browser. A splash screen, the opening letter, then a case board with every document in a sidebar and the property map behind it. Type a code to open an envelope. Read documents at full size. Keep notes in the built-in pad. Progress saves in the browser, so you can stop after Envelope 2 and finish on Saturday.
Every case also ships as print-ready PDFs, one per envelope. Print them, seal them in kraft envelopes, and set five cheap four-digit padlocks to the codes (a friend does this part, or you print blind). Tea-stain the old letters if you feel like it. The documents are identical to the screen version, so you can also mix: paper in hand, screen for hints and the accusation.
Two people on one laptop is how we play. Four works on a television with someone driving. Bigger than that and split into teams with two screens. The codes are the same. Allow the time on the box and then some, and have paper for the timeline.
